Friday, June 26, 2009

Here is the first of a series of new drawing segments that I am producing up here in the subs of Philly for the Hal & Al TV Show. We had shot a bunch of segments with myself and my friend Jamar Nicholas over at Delaware County Community College (who gave me a room to shoot in) and we wound up drawings all kinds of kid friendly things over the course of two Saturdays. This is the first finished segment, which was produced, directed and edited by John Tatarelli, Jr and Jesse Melchoir. They did a superb job on it and Jesse even did all the artwork for the animated opening himself. Luckily, Johnny T has all the camera equipment to pull off a quality production and Jesse is great with doing the graphics work to keep the pacing lively and kid friendly. I'd thought I'd share the first video! These segments will be cut into the Hal & Al show and also be on a future Hal & Al DVD! For more on my friend Jamar, you can go to his site at http://www.jamarnicholas.com/!

I know some of my blog followers are probably wondering what I've been doing since I haven't been posting lately...well, needless to say, I have been busy. I will be posting more soon on a regular basis again! No, really! I mean it! Since my appearance at the elementary school, I've drawn two Scooby-Doo comic stories for DC Comics and I'm finishing up inking the second one that I drew right now. While all this has been going on I also got some super quick turnaround work for the new Power Rangers RPM license and that had a quick deadline so I had drawn the rough sketches over the past weekend (after I attended the Wizard World Philly show) and did the final artwork on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday! There were some late nights here at the drawing board, and today, I'll be back to inking Scooby pages. Juggling many jobs is tough sometimes, especially when they have a tight deadline and they need the work done quickly. I'll post of the RPM sketches soon.

I also have another BIG (somewhat secret) project that was approved last Friday! It was in the works as a proposal since late May and it was greenlighted on June 19th. We had a meeting with the client on Monday (the 22nd) to talk about the design and the direction that it will take. Everyone seems thrilled thus far and after Scooby I'll be head deep in this new adventure. I'll be doing the work for CSL Biotherapies with Odyssey Design Group coordinating it all! More soon!

Here are scans of the printed pages of the press I got recently from my appearance at Sabold Elementary School on May 29. Since it was a local appearance I was only able to get it in two of the local papers: the Springfield Press and Delaware County Magazine. Since I do work for DCM, it was easy enough to get the space and I quickly designed the layout for the half page story myself and added an ad for my next appearance at a local library. As for the Springfield Press, I dropped off a disc with the pics and info at their main offices and they printed one of the pics two weeks later. Here is the layout I did for DCM...

Below is the original picture I saw in the paper for the Comic Book Club at Sabold as well. I'm posting it for an example to any of my DCAD students or other artists who may be beginning their career who are trying to get noticed. Try to get some press for yourself! If people don't know you exist, they won't hire you! I contacted the school and the teacher after I saw this photo and a month later, I'm in the same paper with my own picture and ad. It's all promotion for your career and you have to make it happen...because no one else will!

Thursday, June 4, 2009

On Friday, May 29th, I had an appearance at Sabold Elementary School (a school that I went to back in the day when I was a little one) and I spoke to teacher Kathryn Robertson's class about what I do for my illustrious living. Kathryn is also the sponsor and in charge of one of their many after-school programs...one of which is called The Comic Book Club. It's made up of 3rd and 4th grade students who all have a common love of comics, photography, art and short stories. I saw a photo of The Comic Book Club in The Springfield Press a few weeks ago and contacted the school to see if they would like to have me come in and speak to the kids since I draw a lot of the material that all kids seem to love. I'm always on the look out to promote myself so I thought this was a match made in heaven. The members of the Club sat in with her regular class and I told them all about my work.

I did a slide show presentation for them showcasing my work that I had done, and then I showed them examples of model sheets, what original artwork looks like, what sketches look like, and other animation and licensing treats that most people never get to see. Once again, Courage The Cowardly Dog was well known and well loved by the class so I did a sketch of him to show the class how's he's drawn. I also did some simple cartoon drawings so they could all draw along with me. My comics version of Alfie was also a hit with the kids! The school was excited to have me come in and a great time was had by all!

The Comic Book Club also received a large and generous donation of free comic books from comic publisher DC Comics (dccomics.com) and Captain Blue Hen Comics (CaptainBlueHen.com) in Newark, Delaware!

About Me

Scott Neely is a professional illustrator and designer. For the last 17 years, he’s been a Scooby-Doo and Cartoon Network artist (working on such licensed properties as Dexter's Laboratory, Cow and Chicken, Johnny Bravo, Courage The Cowardly Dog, The Grim Adventures of Billy And Mandy, Powerpuff Girls, Ed, Edd n Eddy, Mike, Lu and Og, I.M. Weasel, and Sheep In The Big City). He has also worked on Pokemon, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, My Friends Tigger & Pooh, Classic Winnie The Pooh, Handy Manny, Phineas And Ferb, Power Rangers Jungle Fury, Power Rangers RPM, Strawberry Shortcake, Bratz, Shrek The Third, Shrek Forever Ever, MegaMind, Kung Fu Panda 2, Madagascar 3, Tom And Jerry, Precious Moments Girls Club and The Li'l Learners Club. Scott is also the visual creator and production designer of Hollywood Hal & Rhinestone Al with the Wannabees, which is a project he co-created with Scott Innes (a.k.a. The voice of Scooby-Doo, Shaggy and Scrappy-Doo) and musician Jim Hogg. He creates all the artwork for the Hal & Al “live-action” TV show and “live” stage shows as well as all Hal & Al advertising, media and product design. For more Hal & Al info, go to www.halandal.com.